Great Regulars: "Lynndie England's smile, and the laughter

of the audience at 'American Idol,'" he [Wayne Koestenbaum] continues, "display a callous, morally deadened joviality"--which is, in turn, representative of a phenomenon he calls "the Jim Crow Gaze," a reference to the inexpressive stares in all those old photographs of lynchings, in which bystanders expose themselves as "archetype[s] of moral imbecility, of living-deadness" that are fundamentally inhumane.

That's terrific stuff, with its expansive vision, its sense that the trivial and the tragic are linked.

from David L. Ulin: Los Angeles Times: 'Humiliation' by Wayne Koestenbaum

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